This
picture was taken on April 1, 1995, with the Hubble Space Telescope.
This eerie structure is made of molecular hydrogen gas and dust that
is an incubator for new stars. It is 7,000 light-years away, and
each “fingertip” is larger than our solar system. Credit: Jeff
Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA.

“Why should we not all live in peace and
harmony? We look up at the same stars, we are fellow-passengers on the
same planet and dwell beneath the same sky. What matters it along which
road each individual endeavors to find the ultimate truth? The riddle of
existence is too great that there should be only one road leading to an
answer.”

-- Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

Philosophy
has a warning device called “paradox”, and it calls attention to mistaken
assumptions about how something works in the “real” world even though
there is no mistake in the logic. It is particularly exemplified by human
bias in experimental results, and this “expectancy” can be demonstrated
mathematically. When this occurs, an assumption about the “real” world
must be changed -- not the logic. This was not a problem with Classical
or Aristotelian logic that held sway until the 19th century,
because it was only concerned with the formal properties of an argument
and not its “factual” accuracy. We now use a symbolic logic that supplants
ordinary language with mathematical symbols, and from this theorists build
models of the “real” universe. When faced with paradox, such as infinite
energies or negative probabilities, we are lost in a labyrinth where we
must reconcile our senses (“matters of fact”) with our logic (“truths of
reason”) to guide us to the “real” world -- wherever that is. But a
compass is useless without a map, and if we are not certain where we are
in relation to where we are going, how do we resolve this?

Karl
Popper, the noted 20th-century Anglo-Austrian philosopher
contended that the only basis for “progress” in science is the objective
reproducibility of experimental results. He did indeed have a point. But
the science that he had so faithfully championed with his logically simple
yet very complex methodology has dispossessed him of the very objectivity
that he guarded so tenaciously. Although “progress” is a concept that is
ambiguous in meaning and application, Popper argued that science could
make “progress” only by avoiding idea-dependent explanations of
experimental results. He contended that it is necessary to assume
universal physical laws and supplement them with initial conditions. But
since this is reminiscent of the cumbersome cycles and epicycles that were
created to explain the incorrect worldview of the Ptolemaic system that
Galileo so effectively demolished with his telescope, it is necessary to
temper this approach with “Ockham’s razor” -- attributed to William of
Ockham, the 14th-century English scholastic philosopher who
rejected the idea of universal concepts and was charged with heresy in
1324 by Pope John XXII. Simply stated, it is vain to do with more what
can be equally accomplished with less. Science continues to use this
principle a fortiori by preferring the simplest of competing
theories. But this assumes that nature does indeed work this way, and this
is a big assumption.

The
idea of a theory of knowledge based on an understanding of human mental
processes can be attributed to the 17th-century English
philosopher John Locke. This observation from his Dedicatory Epistle to
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is incisive: “New
opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other
reason but because they are not already common.” Likewise, science first
attempts to explain unknown phenomena in terms of what is already “known”,
and this supposedly separates viable scientific theories from mere
speculation. But actually this is nothing more than the very same
preference for old uncertainties over new ones; and the more comprehensive
a new theory is, the more likely it will initially face considerable
opposition by orthodox science.

The
problem is that a theory is not necessarily wrong because it can be ruled
out by any of these methods. An important example is Einstein’s Theory of
General Relativity. Instead of adding to the classical physics of
Newtonian mechanics, Einstein’s theory engulfed it within a revolutionary
new way of perceiving the universe. If Einstein had continued to wander
with the multitude in the wilderness for forty years without an
idea-dependent direction to guide him, we would be no closer to the
“Promised Land” than we were in the 17th century -- although we
can’t be certain we are heading in the right “direction” now. In spite of
the dangers inherent in the use of metaphors on all counts here, the
Exodus does provide a graphic analogy of the journey that underlies the
idea of “progress” in the sciences; because there can be no “progress”
without a direction or destination in mind. Science follows its
reason as far as it will allow, and to believe otherwise would mean that
science has been able to find its way because it never had any idea where
it was going. Some would not only agree that indeed this is what has
happened, but also that this is preferable. The noted philosopher Paul
Feyerabend has advocated an approach that is against the specific use of a
rational scientific method, and he believes that a rational scientific
method is not only counterproductive but also impossible to achieve.

Popper
passionately attacked historical proofs as not being “falsifiable” and
therefore “unscientific”, and they are in this sense. However, science has
been successful in condensing experiences of phenomena into manageable
forms with the use of inductive generalizations, or what are popularly
known as “laws of nature.” But as the 19th-century author
Alexandre Dumas fils quipped, “All generalizations are dangerous,
even this one.” I continue this thought by saying that all generalizations
cloak a negative hypothesis -- viz. “This law has no exceptions.” As it
has been said that a new discovery of one ugly fact can ruin a beautiful
old theory, it is not possible to “scientifically” prove that a negative
hypothesis is true in a finite universe, let alone in a universe that may
be infinitely large. Only “historical” proofs will work -- meaning that
to date no evidence to the contrary has yet been discovered. In the case
of an infinite universe, proof requires the logical impossibility of
performing an infinite number of actions in a finite amount of time. So in
either case it is necessary to have faith that somewhere under the
mattress there are no hidden peas that will disturb our fragile dreams.

We do
not know if the universe is infinite, but we can say that science is a
method that approximates a philosophical supertask by searching for exact
knowledge in every possible time and place in a universe that is indeed
gargantuan. Although it is not necessary to physically travel to all
corners of the universe in order to understand it, perceptions become
increasingly abstract as the observer becomes further removed in time and
space from concrete existence. Most of what is known about the
composition, structure, and evolution of the universe has been deduced
from the study of light being emitted from distant objects. According to
NASA, the most distant galaxy seen by the Hubble Space Telescope could be
as far away as 13,000 million light-years. This was deduced from light
that only a moment ago arrived from when the universe was less than one
tenth its current estimated age of 14,000 million years. But consider
that if the sun were a grain of salt, the Milky Way Galaxy with its
estimated 200,000 million stars would represent a 70-ton pile of salt with
each grain being over 7 miles apart. Since the universe contains some
100,000 million such galaxies, its enormousness is overwhelming to the
imagination. The distance from Earth to the star Proxima Centauri is 4.3
light-years, over 25 million million miles. But if it started the journey
today, the space shuttle could not reach this nearest star to our
solar system within the next 25,000 years. Now consider its randomness and
complexity and the brief time that we have been searching for answers, and
science is far from an ultimate understanding of the universe . . .
perhaps far from even asking the right question.

In an
attempt to understand our world, highly specialized science has charted a
course of reverse engineering, or reductionism. Although it has been
provisionally useful, this charter has mandated that the complex “whole”
be explained in terms of the behavior of its simpler component parts. In
cosmology there is uncertainty about what that “whole” is. Yet we continue
to rely on inductive logic to arrive at generalizations about specific
things, with the “whole” being what we imagine within our perceptions of
what is real. This is akin to dismantling the Sistine Chapel and then
trying to understand its significance by performing solemn philosophical
liturgies over the piles of rubble. Our technology has enabled our finding
new things that are smaller and farther away; but it is perhaps not so
ironic that the closer we are able to look, the less certain everything
becomes. By predicating an understanding of the “whole” on the examination
of its parts, we forgo opportunities of knowing things that by their very
nature transcend disassembly. For instance, we have yet to learn how to
explain the “emergence” of phenomena that come into existence as things
become more complex -- particularly in life sciences. Consciousness does
not exist at the cellular level, and life does not exist at the molecular
level, and so forth. So just how relevant are narrowly focused scientific
observations and theories to an understanding of the universe as a whole?
According to Pierre Duhem, an early 20th-century French
philosopher of science, it is a mistake to assume that scientific theories
tell us anything about reality, let alone about the entire universe.

Even
with all this anthropocentric high-mindedness, we have yet to understand
even basic things that are accepted as a priori knowledge. What we
call “life”, for instance, has only popular meaning. Ever since Aristotle,
the Western worldview has included “life” as being something more than
merely organized “matter”. The “mind” is a collective term that includes
various forms of consciousness. Yet there is no clear consensus of what
consciousness is, let alone how it works. We do not understand “matter”
well enough to build a complete model of our universe, and it may be
irreducible (it cannot be made any simpler than it actually
is). “Something” is missing that unifies the forces of the particle world
with the forces of the world in which the brain perceives reality, and we
don’t know what that “something” is. Science refers to it in general
terms as the “theory of everything,” or Grand Unified Theory (GUT). It
may be a strange field or particle (Higgs boson), a Platonic mathematical
entity (137 or the inverse of the square of alpha, the fine structure
constant), a Pythagorean harmony of the cosmos (a “superstring” symphony
-- classical, of course!), or a transcendent archetype (God). Pick any
metaphor you like, no one knows.

In a
postmodern world, it can be argued that science is involved in a tacit
search for God. Can agnosticism, then, be a valid approach to
theology? Since this method must begin with a hypothesis that is only
testable in terms of material phenomena, applying agnosticism to theology
is a mistake. But denying altogether that God exists requires the
untenable position of proving a negative hypothesis involving
transcendental beliefs, which is neither good philosophy nor good
science. The cosmological first cause theory supports the deist philosophy
(God created the universe and then stepped aside). Arguably it is the
least controversial because it is free of inherent contradictions and does
not violate accepted principles of logic, but even the deist philosophy
leaves open the question of God’s whereabouts and form. Since this most
fundamental question about the nature of God cannot be explained in terms
of material phenomena, Kant is correct with his view of God being
unexplainable in this context. But is anything explainable in this context
when the very existence of an absolute physical basis for phenomenal
reality is controvertible in a universe that is both indeterminate
(governed by probabilities) and immaterial (mental constructs of quantum
events)? It seems that agnosticism is no more at variance with theology
than it is with itself.

We
improvise our own truths at will, but not our own history. The 19th-century
German social philosopher Karl Marx said, “Men make their own history, but
they do not make it just as they please….” Descartes, Galileo, and Newton
courageously worked to include mankind in the metaphysics of medieval
scholasticism, but ironically they accomplished the exact opposite. They
constructed an eternal mechanical universe that followed inexorable laws
of cause and effect that firmly established the events of the past,
present, and future as having been determined from the very beginning,
thus making free will an illusion. Only with the establishment of the
science of quantum physics was it possible to accomplish what these men
set out to do; but in the process, mankind lost all prospects of finding
objective knowledge in a universe that is an illusion. We had become
accustomed to a simple view of our perceptions, and things were either
present or absent regardless of whether they were seen or not. Even though
it was impersonal, our world was solid and real. But quantum physics, the
very foundation of our science, says that this simple view is not
true. Again we must reconcile our senses with our reason. Are we back to
where we started, or did we not ever leave?

At the
beginning of the 20th century it was difficult to obtain any
scientific information, but at the beginning of the 21st
century the difficulty now lies in how to react to an unprecedented
accumulation of highly specialized scientific information. Since much of
the world population is not literate in the sciences and embraces a more
apparent mystical worldview, a major cultural imbalance can result if an
elitist parochialism is allowed to develop as it has for most human
endeavor. Means often become ends-in-themselves accompanied by disdain for
other philosophies that are attempts to reach the same ends. There is a
danger of science becoming technology for its own sake with functionaries
doing experiments simply because they can be performed, without
regard to whether they should be performed. Today there is an
increasing dependence on complex technologies controlled by multinational
corporations that are still consolidating their power, and the
consequences of these new technologies will depend on how they are
used. For example, there are segments of the human genome that profoundly
influence the development of the “mind” and body of each of us, and some
are corporate property protected by patents. The consequences of how this
technology is used will probably be much more than revolutionary; it will
be evolutionary.

But at
this point in time we do not know much about the overall scheme of things
in biological terms either. A study by the Institute of Genomic Research
reported that among the 300 or so different genes that are necessary to
keep the simple bacterium alive, scientists have no idea what a third of
them do. This is far from understanding the 100 million million
specialized cells of the complex human organism that contain at least a
hundred times as many different genes. In addition, Richard Lewontin, an
eminent biologist at Harvard University, asserts that no organism can be
“computed” from the information in its genes. He maintains that the use of
the word compute as a metaphor to describe the role of genes is bad
biology because it implies that there is an internal self-sufficiency of
DNA, and an organism is the unique result of a process that includes the
sequence of environments in which it develops. It gets even more
complicated than this, because recent experiments have shown that
variations in symmetry within the same environment are caused by random
events at the molecular level.

It is
not certain to what degree our sapience -- at least that which we
emphatically define ourselves taxonomically as Homo sapiens sapiens
-- is genetically coded. But let’s take a giant leap of faith and assume
that we can capture the spirit of Daedalus by using applied genetics to
redesign ourselves to be on a par with our technology before we blast into
the cosmos. Will we inadvertently assume the spirit of Icarus as well, and
suffer the same fate? So far, our medical strategy has been to minimize
elements that work “against” us in natural selection, even though these
very elements regulate our population within a perilously balanced
biosphere. We have yet to cure all ills, the Fountain of Youth has not
been found, and both victim and survivor can rest assured that they are
not to be blamed for whatever happens in this regard. But when this is no
longer the case, what will happen to society? Today, some look upon
China’s policy of one child per couple as totalitarian; and others look
upon birth control, abortion, and euthanasia as immoral and
unethical. Americans are currently faced with the political issue of
permitting research in the United States on human embryonic stem cells
that may hold the key to treating a wide range of human diseases. Yet this
is mere child’s play compared to what “we” will be faced with in a “brave
new world” of our own design. But the role of God cannot be assumed
without losing our humanness, so we does not mean us
in this new theater of the absurd.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to a dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more…